Cognitive Neuroscience

My past few blog posts have been on my goal to become an Olympic sprinter, but today I'm switching topics from my sports goal to my professional goal. For the longest time I've been convinced that I wanted to be a lawyer. I was going to go to UCLA and study psychology in undergrad then go to Stanford Law School after that. This past weekend, however, I watched three episodes of the show Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole on the science channel and I was sucked into the two episodes that had to do with the human brain. The first one was about the brain patterns of criminals and psychopaths and also the people who judge them. It talked a lot about the different parts of the brain and how a small change in one little section can cause someone to ignore the will to be good. They showed a study on the episode that proved people's will to be good started at an early age by doing a simple experiment on babies. The other episode, which was the most interesting one to me, was one about our subconscious. I was basically glued to the tv for the entire hour and I can't even describe how awesome it was.


Here's a link to the episode on YouTube.

I'm actually watching an episode now about eternity and next is the one on evil and then the one on the subconscious comes on. :) Anyway, this got me thinking and I decided that I'd really like to be a cognitive neuroscientist and study the mechanics of a brain and what makes people act the way they do. This website is something that I found that just provides a few recent studies and the overview of what they mean. I think this is a really good way to keep up with what's going on and to learn basic things about neuroscience. Another thing I found was just somebody's quizlet flashcards on high school level neuroscience vocabulary words. I thought that this was really interesting and that it would be cool just to check them out.

The last thing I have today is a summer program on cognitive neuroscience for high school students at Berkley University in California. I really want to enroll in this program because I would get fundamental information on the subject.

Here's a picture of some neurons.

Usain Bolt

In my last blog post I wrote about wanting to become an Olympic sprinter, which is still true. I'm joining indoor track at Blair and our season starts in mid November! I'm really excited for that and to see how I am at the 100m. I might try the 55m or the 200m but the 55m just seems to short and I'm worried about my knee (which has next to no cartilage in the left one) running around the curve of the 200m. But I digress.

This post is really just supposed to be about the fastest man in the world; Usain Bolt. He's one of my idols because he hasn't been running the 100m for that long in the track world and he's already set tons of records. He was originally running the 200m and 400m because his coaches thought that he was more of a long distance sprinter, but he wanted to run the 100m. Once he broke the Jamaican national record for the... I can't remember if it was the 200m or the 400m but he broke that record and his coaches let him start running the 100m, and look at where he is now!!

I admire his (and all the other sprinters') hard work and perserverence and his total commitment to the sport. I really want to get that feeling about an activity where I love it so much that I don't mind doing it for several hours every day.

Usain bolt is 26 years old in case anyone was wondering, and he's really tall for a sprinter; 6'5" and the first time he won a medal for the 100m by himself was in the 2009 World Championships in Beijing and he got gold! He only got his first 100m medal three years ago and he's already set the world and Olympic records. Just the fact that he's been doing that event for such a short time with so much success is really motivating to me and makes me think that in four years I'll be good enough to make it to the Olympics, even if I don't make it past my heat. To get into the Olympics last time I checked the qualifying time was 11.24 seconds in a national or international competition. My issue will be finding a national competition to enter...

This post is pretty much over but I just want to point something funny out that I've noticed. Every time Usain Bolt runs a race as he approaches the finish line he looks behind him to see the other poeple. I'm pretty sure this isn't good and knocks off some of his time, if only a few hundredths of a second but still. I wouldn't recommend that. Even with his looking back at the end of a race he's still blown away the world record and the Olympic record so I guess it's not that much of an issue for him.



Usain Bolt looking behind him at the 2012 Summer Olympics

My New Aspriation

I've never really followed the Olympics until this past summer, where I was watching it every day. I was blown away by the sportsmanship shown throughout the different events and it made me realize that not everyone on that level is competitive to a point where they are rude to competitors. I was really impressed with the gymnastics but what really caught my attention was the track and field. I have never in my life had an interest in running except for occasionally sprinting but after watching the Olympic track events, especially the 100m and 200m it was like my entire attitude towards running changed. I'll describe it as being "bitten by the running bug" as some might say. I saw Usain Bolt dominate the 100m and the 200m for the second Olympics in a row and I was inspired beyond words. All of a sudden I decided that I would be like him and become an Olympic athlete. Luckily for me, track isn't a sport like gymnastics where you have to start at the age of 3 to have any chance at making the Olympics, a lot of track stars start in early high school or late middle school. I made the decision sometime last year to do winter track, but that was primarily because I just wanted to do a sport. Recently I've been really looking forward to doing winter track to gauge whether or not I could actually be good at the sport. If I find that I'm running the 100m in 15 seconds or the 200m in 32 or so, I probably don't have much of a chance of making it to the Olympics. My goal by the end of the winter track season is to be able to run the 100 in around 12.5 seconds if I can get the start right. Depending on where I am at the end of the season I'll most likely quit lacrosse and do track in the spring and hopefully I'll knock off another .2 seconds. I've been warned that in training for the 100m I'd have to do several longer distance runs but unlike before I look forward to doing them if it will improve my sprinting. Throughout the track season I will look up to people like Usain Bolt, Carmalita Jeter, Allyson Felix, and Sanya Richards-Ross to continue to motivate myself. I know this is far-fetched but I'd like to make it to the 2016 Olympics. I have no illusion that I'll get close to medaling, if I went I wouldn't even get to the semi-finals but just getting to Rio would be incredible. In the 2020 Olympics I'm definitely going to the finals.

Carmalita Jeter after winning the silver medal in the 100m at the 2012 Olympic Games

Dystopian Trailer Progress Assignment

For the dystopian trailer project I am the scriptwriter. I have just finished the script and all we need to do is figure out when to go and film. There are 10 scenes in our trailer and each scene has multiple shots. The trailer will start out with a news report that we will film talking about artificial intelligence. We show that report one more time later in the trailer. We have a variety of shots from the front and back, establishing shots, medium shots, and close-ups and we also use both dialogue from the scene and several voice-overs. We are using the dance edit of the song Like a Criminal by District 78 to undertone almost the entire trailer. It's a techno song that represents the cold life that the people live being controlled by cell phones. When we have shots of the buildings we are likely going to put our propaganda poster on a few to demonstrate the propaganda aspect of life.

The story that is to be told through our trailer is that in a world where the iPhone 27 has gotten so advanced people don't think for themselves, they are practically zombies. The main character has a best friend which is uncommon in this society and one day the best friend suddenly vanishes. When the main character asks her phone where her friend is, the phone shows no recognition of the friend ever existing. That part is similar to people being "vaporized" in 1984. We then show the main character sneaking into a guarded library and finding a book that tells her who invented these cell phones. While we never show her actually obtaining a police uniform and traveling back in time, we show her in a police uniform running through crowds of people nothing like the ones previously shown in the trailer with a voice-over briefly explaining it. Through a few different shots the audience sees her go up to the person who invented the robots.

Our five dystopian characteristics are restricted thought (machines trying to get the main character to stop thinking about her best friend), figurehead or concept is worshipped (people think cell phones are making their life perfect), constant surveillance (a cell phone tells one of the police about a specific citizen and has the police go back in time and destroy them), dehumanized state (people walking around zombie-like), and the illusion of a perfect utopia (people think the phones are helping them).

5x5 Video Project

1. Driving to the golf course
2. Video of a green
3. My golf bag
4. Geese on the course
5. Someone's put

For this project I just used my iPhone and edited it with iMovie and it ran very smoothly. I didn't run into any problems while editing this project and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

I think that for our next independent video project we could get into groups and maybe make a short documentary about something that we're interested in. It would only have to be about 10 minutes long and wouldn't have to be very complicated.

Dystopian Trailer Assignment

Equilibrium. Kurt Wimmer. R. 2002
In the near future everyone's actions and emotions are rigidly controlled by the Cleric, and the highest ranking Cleric (Christian Bale) soon discovers that the government he's working for is not so great when they arrest his wife. He joins the resistance and plots to overthrow the government, while still being employed as a Cleric.

This trailer does an excellent job showing the different aspects of a dystopian society using a combination of words and clips from the movie. There is a good ratio of words to film and enhances the audience's understanding of the plot. There are voice-overs in the beginning explaining who the main character is as he bursts through a door surrounded by gunshots. This is a better way to effectively show who the main character is instead of just having text or just having film. The editing creates a basic plot of the movie but doesn't give the resolution, making the audience want to know how it ends. I would like to implement the editing techniques of voice-overs and text throughout my trailer to convey the characters and plot. I also want to have a few establishing shots mixed in to show the lack of freedom in the society.

Personalized Learning Article Reflection

For this assignment I read the article "Preparing Students to Learn Without Us" by Will Richardson. It wa about the new concept of personalized learning for students. Personalized learning/personal learning is basically where a student creates their own ways of finding out information while still meeting state standards. Students in a few high schools with this program create their own lessons and how they are going to learn and present the information. This allows the student to learn about something that really speaks to them and so they're more interested in it. "Through these activities, the student aligned her work to the standards she chose." is an important quote from this article because it summarizes the whoe idea of personalized learning.

I was surprised that this concept has been introduced to several schools around the country so quickly. I think that personalized learning is a great idea and that it could be an easy thing to do in this class. We could all choose something about filmmaking that we find interesting and then go off on our own to find ways to learn and reflect what we've discovered. It would give us all an opportunity to learn what we wanted which would definitely make at least me more interested in school. I would definitely like to learn more about both the editing and the actual filming aspects of making a film. Instead of spending a few classes each on scriptwriting, filming, directing, and editing, this would give me a chance to have more time to learn about the things that I really care about.

Here's a link to my annotated article